ISLAMABAD — The campaign posters for the Pakistan People’s Party show both why it has been so popular for so long and why it’s in trouble ahead of this Saturday’s national election: two of the party icons on the posters are dead and a third is not old enough to be a candidate.

As the historic vote approaches, one of South Asia’s most venerable parties has problems.

BAGHDAD — Five American soldiers died Monday when a barrage of rockets slammed into a base in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad — the largest, single-day loss of life for U.S. forces in Iraq in two years.

The attack follows warnings from Shiite militants backed by Iran and anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that they would violently resist any effort to keep American troops in Iraq past their year-end deadline to go home.